Hidden Legends: Clara Luper
In 1958, Clara Luper and a dozen students sat at the lunch counter of an Oklahoma City drugstore and changed history. Decades later, an OU department named in her honor is fighting to gain recognition for the Civil Rights hero who has been overlooked by the nation.
This is the second installation of a three-part OU Daily series exploring the stories of prominent black women in OU history.
H
e was instructed to sit still no matter what. If someone spit or cursed or got in his face, he should not react.
Suddenly, they came in yelling: “You better get off that seat, boy.”
J.D. Baker was about to get into a fight with a heckler when he remembered — it was only a simulation.
The former OU student body president and other students were in an Introduction to African and African-American Studies class when asked to participate in a re-enactment of the 1958 Oklahoma City sit-in.
“It was so tough, it was so tough in that setting,” Baker said. “So I can only imagine.”
Replace the chalkboard and supervising professor with a diner counter and police officers, and the scene that day in the classroom was just like the one 60 years prior at Katz Drug Store on Main and Robinson streets in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City.
The country’s first sit-in movement was spearheaded not by college students in North Carolina, but rather by schoolteacher Clara Luper, who, along with hundreds of members of the NAACP Youth Council, integrated restaurants across Oklahoma City one by one in the face of resistance and continual arrests.
In March, the state’s flagship university took its first step toward honoring its own civil rights icon, who was also one of OU’s first black graduates, by naming its African and African-American Studies department after her. Classes like the one Baker was in are intended to exemplify excellence in research, teaching and service — goals Luper embodied and passed on to those whose lives she touched.
“There is no one alive or passed away,” said Karlos Hill, the department’s chair, “that better suits what we’re about than Clara Luper.”
H
e was instructed to sit still no matter what. If someone spit or cursed or got in his face, he should not react.
Suddenly, they came in yelling: “You better get off that seat, boy.”
J.D. Baker was about to get into a fight with a heckler when he remembered — it was only a simulation.
The former OU student body president and other students were in an Introduction to African and African-American Studies class when asked to participate in a re-enactment of the 1958 Oklahoma City sit-in.
“It was so tough, it was so tough in that setting,” Baker said. “So I can only imagine.”
Replace the chalkboard and supervising professor with a diner counter and police officers, and the scene that day in the classroom was just like the one 60 years prior at Katz Drug Store on Main and Robinson streets in the heart of downtown Oklahoma City.
The country’s first sit-in movement was spearheaded not by college students in North Carolina, but rather by schoolteacher Clara Luper, who, along with hundreds of members of the NAACP Youth Council, integrated restaurants across Oklahoma City one by one in the face of resistance and continual arrests.
In March, the state’s flagship university took its first step toward honoring its own civil rights icon, who was also one of OU’s first black graduates, by naming its African and African-American Studies department after her. Classes like the one Baker was in are intended to exemplify excellence in research, teaching and service — goals Luper embodied and passed on to those whose lives she touched.
“There is no one alive or passed away,” said Karlos Hill, the department’s chair, “that better suits what we’re about than Clara Luper.”
First of its kind
S
tanley Evans sat slouched on a diner seat, gazing at the spot on the counter in front of him where there should have been a hamburger and fries.
The 11-year-old, along with three other children, was waiting. Waiting for the white servers behind the counter at Katz Drug Store to fulfill the promise of equal rights promised by America’s forefathers in the Constitution.
Evans, now 71, remembers the striped shirt he wore that day. He remembers the haircut and the “big ugly” glasses he says made him look like the nerd he was.
What he doesn’t remember is sitting on that stool, or anyone taking the photo that would become one of the most iconic images of the event that would inspire black college students in North Carolina to ask for coffee at an all-white lunch counter two years later and launch a nation-wide movement that helped end Jim Crow policies of segregation.
“We didn’t see that we were making history,” said Evans, former OU Law dean of students. “We just saw that we were fixing a problem that was a problem for us — we thought we should be able to eat anywhere we wanted to.”
S
tanley Evans sat slouched on a diner seat, gazing at the spot on the counter in front of him where there should have been a hamburger and fries.
The 11-year-old, along with three other children, was waiting. Waiting for the white servers behind the counter at Katz Drug Store to fulfill the promise of equal rights promised by America’s forefathers in the Constitution.
Evans, now 71, remembers the striped shirt he wore that day. He remembers the haircut and the “big ugly” glasses he says made him look like the nerd he was.
What he doesn’t remember is sitting on that stool, or anyone taking the photo that would become one of the most iconic images of the event that would inspire black college students in North Carolina to ask for coffee at an all-white lunch counter two years later and launch a nation-wide movement that helped end Jim Crow policies of segregation.
“We didn’t see that we were making history,” said Evans, former OU Law dean of students. “We just saw that we were fixing a problem that was a problem for us — we thought we should be able to eat anywhere we wanted to.”
The sit-in idea was sparked by Luper’s 8-year-old daughter, Marilyn, after a trip to New York City for an NAACP convention opened her eyes to how life could be. The group was able to eat in restaurants and stay in hotels without any questions asked.
“They came back to Oklahoma where they couldn’t go and eat in a restaurant, they couldn’t order a hamburger and a Coke, they couldn’t stay in a hotel, they had to stay outside,” Evans said. “The bathrooms in the South had ‘white’ or ‘colored’ — so they were forced back into the Jim Crow rules.”
Evans, who lived down the street from the Lupers, was in their yard one day after the New York trip when the elementary school kids were discussing the issue. Marilyn said she did not understand. She didn’t like the situation, and she wanted to fix it.
“So Ms. Luper said, ‘OK, if you guys are really serious about this, we’re going to do it — but we’re going to do it right. We’re going to be organized, and we’re going to do it in a nonviolent way,’” Evans recalls. “And that was the start of the sit-in movement in 1958.”
Luper, who taught at Dunjee High School east of Oklahoma City, had the key element of trust on her side. Parents of the children involved in the project knew the beloved history teacher would keep their children safe. Such was the case for Evans, whose parents were leery of his involvement in a controversial movement in the overwhelmingly white Oklahoma City, but permitted it anyway.
On Aug. 19, 1958, Luper and 13 kids walked into Katz Drug Store, sat down on stools lining the counter and asked to be served. They waited quietly until closing time, even after a white woman sat on the lap of a black girl and four white youths came in waving Confederate flags.
Two days later, Katz corporate management in Kansas City, Missouri, desegregated its lunch counters in three states.
Inspired by that success, the group worked its way from restaurant to restaurant, following the same strategy. They spread out across lunch counters, tables and booths, quietly reading magazines or coloring with crayons until they were served. Some places saw them coming and immediately gave in. Some caved after several days.
“So we’d go to Greens, we’d sit in there for three or four days,” Evans said. “Then we’d go to the next restaurant, do the same thing all over again.”
Others refused to serve black people for years, calling to the police to arrest the group for trespassing each time they arrived. Luper herself was arrested 27 times during the movement, which lasted six years.
“The thing for us was,” Evans said, “it was about changing a situation that bothered us.”
The sit-in idea was sparked by Luper’s 8-year-old daughter, Marilyn, after a trip to New York City for an NAACP convention opened her eyes to how life could be. The group was able to eat in restaurants and stay in hotels without any questions asked.
“They came back to Oklahoma where they couldn’t go and eat in a restaurant, they couldn’t order a hamburger and a Coke, they couldn’t stay in a hotel, they had to stay outside,” Evans said. “The bathrooms in the South had ‘white’ or ‘colored’ — so they were forced back into the Jim Crow rules.”
Evans, who lived down the street from the Lupers, was in their yard one day after the New York trip when the elementary school kids were discussing the issue. Marilyn said she did not understand. She didn’t like the situation, and she wanted to fix it.
“So Ms. Luper said, ‘OK, if you guys are really serious about this, we’re going to do it — but we’re going to do it right. We’re going to be organized, and we’re going to do it in a nonviolent way,’” Evans recalls. “And that was the start of the sit-in movement in 1958.”
Luper, who taught at Dunjee High School east of Oklahoma City, had the key element of trust on her side. Parents of the children involved in the project knew the beloved history teacher would keep their children safe. Such was the case for Evans, whose parents were leery of his involvement in a controversial movement in the overwhelmingly white Oklahoma City, but permitted it anyway.
On Aug. 19, 1958, Luper and 13 kids walked into Katz Drug Store, sat down on stools lining the counter and asked to be served. They waited quietly until closing time, even after a white woman sat on the lap of a black girl and four white youths came in waving Confederate flags.
Two days later, Katz corporate management in Kansas City, Missouri, desegregated its lunch counters in three states.
Inspired by that success, the group worked its way from restaurant to restaurant, following the same strategy. They spread out across lunch counters, tables and booths, quietly reading magazines or coloring with crayons until they were served. Some places saw them coming and immediately gave in. Some caved after several days.
“So we’d go to Greens, we’d sit in there for three or four days,” Evans said. “Then we’d go to the next restaurant, do the same thing all over again.”
Others refused to serve black people for years, calling to the police to arrest the group for trespassing each time they arrived. Luper herself was arrested 27 times during the movement, which lasted six years.
“The thing for us was,” Evans said, “it was about changing a situation that bothered us.”
‘Forcing us to rise up’
S
itting in his office at OU College of Law where the sit-in photo rests in the corner on its own stand, Evans laughs as he offers one word to describe Luper — mean.
He recalls Luper once calling to say she wanted him to fill in on her radio show the next day. The then-recently retired Army colonel had never before been on the radio, but that didn’t matter. Luper hung up before he could protest any more.
“If you understand anything about Ms. Luper, anybody that knows her will tell you that if Ms. Luper wants you to do something, there is no such thing as answering no,” Evans said. “She will not accept no for an answer.”
Luper, who died in 2011 at 88, continued to be active in the NAACP. She took part in Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington where he delivered the famous “I Have a Dream” speech, marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 on what became known as “Bloody Sunday” after police attacked the 600 activists and ran unsuccessfully for a spot in the U.S. Senate in 1972.
Her late-night demanding phone calls, emphasis on excellence and love of young people, made her a beloved educator and community figure who was responsible not only for her civil rights movement contributions, but also for the achievements of a generation she challenged and inspired to greatness.
“I became a colonel in the Army because of her,” Evans said. “Another person that became the first black police chief in OKC was another one of her students … and you start to see all these people that grew up around her and through her. Her standard, her strength, her courageousness, but also, her way of forcing us to rise up, to meet the bar, really kind of helped us to take off.”
Though he is now retired, a steady stream of law students filters through Evans’ office each day. He offers his mentorship, a friendly hug and a listening ear to anyone lucky enough to set foot in the lamp-lit space.
Baker, whose grandmother was friends with Luper, remembers her quizzing him and his brothers once when they visited her in the hospital post-surgery. His brother told Luper he dreamed of going to Duke to play basketball, but she scorned him — why would he not want to go to a historically black college like Langston University?
“She believed in her people,” said Baker, who now serves as a special assistant to Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt. “She believed in us and our ability to rise up and to build up to greatness.”
Luper’s gift for educating and inspiring a young generation was another compelling reason to name the African and African-American Studies department after her, Hill said.
“She, in many ways, is someone that I aspire to be like,” said Hill, co-host of a podcast on race and culture, and the author of an academic book on lynching. “Because if I can have just, if I can have a tenth of the impact that she had on students, I would have had a successful career, you know what I mean? So I think that’s to me what’s most amazing about her legacy.”
S
itting in his office at OU College of Law where the sit-in photo rests in the corner on its own stand, Evans laughs as he offers one word to describe Luper — mean.
He recalls Luper once calling to say she wanted him to fill in on her radio show the next day. The then-recently retired Army colonel had never before been on the radio, but that didn’t matter. Luper hung up before he could protest any more.
“If you understand anything about Ms. Luper, anybody that knows her will tell you that if Ms. Luper wants you to do something, there is no such thing as answering no,” Evans said. “She will not accept no for an answer.”
Luper, who died in 2011 at 88, continued to be active in the NAACP. She took part in Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington where he delivered the famous “I Have a Dream” speech, marched from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 on what became known as “Bloody Sunday” after police attacked the 600 activists and ran unsuccessfully for a spot in the U.S. Senate in 1972.
Her late-night demanding phone calls, emphasis on excellence and love of young people, made her a beloved educator and community figure who was responsible not only for her civil rights movement contributions, but also for the achievements of a generation she challenged and inspired to greatness.
“I became a colonel in the Army because of her,” Evans said. “Another person that became the first black police chief in OKC was another one of her students … and you start to see all these people that grew up around her and through her. Her standard, her strength, her courageousness, but also, her way of forcing us to rise up, to meet the bar, really kind of helped us to take off.”
Though he is now retired, a steady stream of law students filters through Evans’ office each day. He offers his mentorship, a friendly hug and a listening ear to anyone lucky enough to set foot in the lamp-lit space.
Baker, whose grandmother was friends with Luper, remembers her quizzing him and his brothers once when they visited her in the hospital post-surgery. His brother told Luper he dreamed of going to Duke to play basketball, but she scorned him — why would he not want to go to a historically black college like Langston University?
“She believed in her people,” said Baker, who now serves as a special assistant to Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt. “She believed in us and our ability to rise up and to build up to greatness.”
Luper’s gift for educating and inspiring a young generation was another compelling reason to name the African and African-American Studies department after her, Hill said.
“She, in many ways, is someone that I aspire to be like,” said Hill, co-host of a podcast on race and culture, and the author of an academic book on lynching. “Because if I can have just, if I can have a tenth of the impact that she had on students, I would have had a successful career, you know what I mean? So I think that’s to me what’s most amazing about her legacy.”
Honoring a legend
I
t was mid-August in downtown Oklahoma City and Hill was trying to keep an eye on his 5-year-old twins amid the throng of people marching to Kaiser’s Grateful Bean Cafe, which now sits on the corner where Katz used to.
They entered the restaurant along with hundreds of others who, just 60 years ago, would have been denied service. But that day, on the anniversary re-enactment of the sit-in, people of all races and ages rejoiced in the freedom they have thanks to the courage of Luper and her many students.
The room was filled with a sense of energy and passion for social justice, Hill said, as voices of all ages and races joined to sing gospel songs like “Freedom Movement” and “We Shall Overcome.”
“My daughter to this day hums and tries to sing the songs that we were singing on that march,” Hill said.
The recent anniversary, organized by a committee that included Hill, Luper’s daughter Marilyn and several other participants of the original sit-in movement, has sparked a flurry of activity aimed at commemorating the sit-in and Luper’s lasting legacy. But while Oklahoma has shone a light on its hometown hero, the rest of the nation remains in the dark.
I
t was mid-August in downtown Oklahoma City and Hill was trying to keep an eye on his 5-year-old twins amid the throng of people marching to Kaiser’s Grateful Bean Cafe, which now sits on the corner where Katz used to.
They entered the restaurant along with hundreds of others who, just 60 years ago, would have been denied service. But that day, on the anniversary re-enactment of the sit-in, people of all races and ages rejoiced in the freedom they have thanks to the courage of Luper and her many students.
The room was filled with a sense of energy and passion for social justice, Hill said, as voices of all ages and races joined to sing gospel songs like “Freedom Movement” and “We Shall Overcome.”
“My daughter to this day hums and tries to sing the songs that we were singing on that march,” Hill said.
The recent anniversary, organized by a committee that included Hill, Luper’s daughter Marilyn and several other participants of the original sit-in movement, has sparked a flurry of activity aimed at commemorating the sit-in and Luper’s lasting legacy. But while Oklahoma has shone a light on its hometown hero, the rest of the nation remains in the dark.
“For the most part, Clara Luper’s story is understood as an Oklahoma story and maybe even an Oklahoma City story,” Hill said. “So one of the things that I know the committee wants to do is to really help people understand that Clara Luper’s story is a national story.”
In September 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It includes a civil rights exhibit but is missing a large piece of the story.
“They have an installation around the sit-in movement, and the Oklahoma City sit-in is nowhere to be found — not even a footnote,” Hill said. “So the committee, myself, want to change that. We think that’s an injustice.”
History books and Wikipedia pages cite a Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-in as the event that first sparked the movement, but it occurred two years after the one in Oklahoma City.
Evans said the college students who led the Greensboro sit-in got the idea after several of the Oklahoma City sit-in participants reported their progress at a national NAACP meeting.
“The difference was, (the Greensboro sit-in) got a whole lot of publicity,” Evans said.
The committee, in collaboration with Oklahoma City leaders, is intent on getting the site where Katz Drug Store once stood recognized as a national landmark to commemorate the movement that began there.
“That national landmark, coupled with potentially getting them to revise the civil rights exhibition at the National Mall, and then just beginning to do scholarship on Ms. Luper and the sit-in-ers, will help to raise the awareness,” Hill said. “So that’s our mission.”
On a recent weekday afternoon, Hill sits in his office on the fifth floor of the Physical Sciences Center where a wide row of windows offers a view of the tops of browning trees on OU’s campus.
His walls are adorned with posters, photos and paintings that illuminate his passion for the field he studies and the department he directs. There’s a framed photo illustration of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, a map of the historic all-black towns in Oklahoma, a poster for a talk he gave on police shootings of unarmed black people.
There’s one blank spot on his wall, too, but he said he already knows what image he wants fill it — the famous photo of Evans and other children sitting at the lunch counter, a constant reminder of the spirit of social justice and community engagement he hopes to instill in his department.
“That’s what keeps me up at night,” Hill said. “How do we live up to it … what are we doing to extend, further Mother Luper’s legacy? What are we doing to extend that?”
“For the most part, Clara Luper’s story is understood as an Oklahoma story and maybe even an Oklahoma City story,” Hill said. “So one of the things that I know the committee wants to do is to really help people understand that Clara Luper’s story is a national story.”
In September 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It includes a civil rights exhibit but is missing a large piece of the story.
“They have an installation around the sit-in movement, and the Oklahoma City sit-in is nowhere to be found — not even a footnote,” Hill said. “So the committee, myself, want to change that. We think that’s an injustice.”
History books and Wikipedia pages cite a Greensboro, North Carolina, sit-in as the event that first sparked the movement, but it occurred two years after the one in Oklahoma City.
Evans said the college students who led the Greensboro sit-in got the idea after several of the Oklahoma City sit-in participants reported their progress at a national NAACP meeting.
“The difference was, (the Greensboro sit-in) got a whole lot of publicity,” Evans said.
The committee, in collaboration with Oklahoma City leaders, is intent on getting the site where Katz Drug Store once stood recognized as a national landmark to commemorate the movement that began there.
“That national landmark, coupled with potentially getting them to revise the civil rights exhibition at the National Mall, and then just beginning to do scholarship on Ms. Luper and the sit-in-ers, will help to raise the awareness,” Hill said. “So that’s our mission.”
On a recent weekday afternoon, Hill sits in his office on the fifth floor of the Physical Sciences Center where a wide row of windows offers a view of the tops of browning trees on OU’s campus.
His walls are adorned with posters, photos and paintings that illuminate his passion for the field he studies and the department he directs. There’s a framed photo illustration of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, a map of the historic all-black towns in Oklahoma, a poster for a talk he gave on police shootings of unarmed black people.
There’s one blank spot on his wall, too, but he said he already knows what image he wants fill it — the famous photo of Evans and other children sitting at the lunch counter, a constant reminder of the spirit of social justice and community engagement he hopes to instill in his department.
“That’s what keeps me up at night,” Hill said. “How do we live up to it … what are we doing to extend, further Mother Luper’s legacy? What are we doing to extend that?”
